As Michael Rady‘s new Hallmark Christmas movie, “Adopting St. Nick,” premieres on Halloween night, he may have his hands full as the dad of four.
He and his wife of 16 years, former actress and busy entrepreneur Rachael Kemery, live on an idyllic, four-acre farm in Easton, Connecticut, with their kids — sons Ellington, 14, and August, 12, and daughters Olive, 10, and Maisie, 5. Here’s everything we know about his college sweetheart.
Michael Rady Met His Wife in College Before They Moved to Los Angeles, But They Eventually Returned to the East Coast
Rady and Kemery met at Temple University in Philadelphia, according to TV Insider. As he pursued an acting career, they moved to Los Angeles, where Rady’s first big movie role was as Kostos in 2005’s “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” (and its 2008 sequel). They got engaged in 2009, while he was starring in the “Melrose Place” reboot, and were married in May 2010.
Kemery appeared in several short films in those early years of their relationship, and later had small roles in a couple of her husband’s projects while juggling motherhood, including his 2013 movie with Meghan Markle, “Random Encounters,” and the 2018 horror movie “Secret Santa.”
Rady became a fan-favorite at Hallmark Channel starting in 2015, as he made his network debut in “Cloudy With a Chance of Love” opposite Katie Leclerc. He also stayed busy with recurring roles in series like “Jane the Virgin” and “UnREAL.” But eventually, he and Kemery longed to return to the East Coast.
“As our kids were getting closer to school age, I don’t know, we were craving a change,” he told EntertainmentNow in 2024. “We were missing just the feeling of home that we both grew up with on the East Coast. We wanted better schooling options, we were wanting to buy a house, we were wanting to be closer to our families on the East Coast. And we were really wanting a deeper, more consistent immersion in nature. We wanted to be in nature a lot, surrounded by nature like we grew up.”
Rady, who’s also a woodworker with a knack for fixing and building things, and Kemery, a botanical grower who dreamed of tending to a small flower farm, found a fixer-upper on four acres of land in Easton, Connecticut, that felt perfect.
Ironically, the same weekend they moved to their fixer-upper, Rady started filming a Hallmark movie in Connecticut — 2018’s “Christmas at Pemberley Manor.” He recalled, “I’d come home at night time, and on the weekends, I’d smash out some walls. It was wonderfully convenient.”
Michael Rady is ‘So Proud’ of Rachael Kemery for Her Growing Business
Meanwhile, Kemery started her own business, Rising Iris Farm, by planting an assortment of flowers on their land. But what began with bouquets morphed unexpectedly into her own skincare line. She explains on her website, “The Calendula, Chamomile, Yarrow, and Indigo we were growing for bouquets turned out to be some of the most potent ingredients for skin. So we started infusing them. Slowly. By hand. And Rising Iris became a farm-to-face skincare line rooted in the same soil it grew from.”
All of Rising Girl’s products, which Rady uses for his own skincare, are formulated and bottled on the farm in small batches, from face masks to lip balm. Kemery explains on her site, “I started Rising Iris because I wanted to make something real. Skincare that comes from a place you can actually visit, made by hands you can actually know.”
In 2025, she became an expert gardening contributor to Martha Stewart’s website, which Rady sweetly celebrated in January. Posting a screenshot of the latest story Kemery was featured in via his Instagram Stories, the actor wrote, “Her 6th piece for @marthastewart48 you’d think I’d be chill about it by now. But I’m not. So proud of you, my love!”
Rady — and his glowing skin! — can be seen with Amy Groening in Hallmark Channel’s “Adopting St. Nick” on October 31 at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and the movie will be available to stream via Hallmark+ the next day.
Meet Michael Rady’s Amazing Wife, Who Runs a Beautiful Business on Their Farm